Conference Explores Human Rights
And Terrorism After 9/11
By Sherry Fisher and
By Elizabeth Omara-Otunnu

If human rights advocates want to have an impact on public
policy, they must balance principles with pragmatism, according
to Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Center for Human
Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University.

Michael Ignatieff of Harvard University gave this year's Sackler Human Rights Lecture, the opening event of a conference on human rights.
Photo by Dollie Harvey

Ignatieff was speaking during the Ninth Annual Sackler Lecture
on Human Rights, the opening event of a conference titled "Human
Rights in an Age of Terrorism" that took place September 9-11. The
conference, the inaugural conference of the University's new
Human Rights Institute, examined the implications for human
rights observance of the new political order
that has emerged since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Ignatieff, who was introduced by Richard Wilson, director of
the Human Rights Institute, called for a "balancing approach"
to human rights,
to resolve the contradiction between absolute principles and
pressing security concerns.

"If you're on the front line . fighting to defend standards
that are under attack, then you fight for them without qualification,"
he said. "But if you're a human rights thinker whose concern
is to have public policy impact and speak to people who have
to make balancing decisions, then you have to speak the language
of choice."

Defining terrorism as "the deliberate targeting of non-combatants
by non-state actors for political purposes," Ignatieff said
terrorism is often used in support of human rights. Much of
the terrorism that has taken place in the past century - in
areas such as Palestine, Chechnya, Northern Ireland, and South
Africa - has been in pursuit of human rights goals, such as
the right to self-determination, he said.

"The horror of terrorism," he added, "is it evacuates the political
space that would give us alternatives to violence."

As an example of tough political choices that weigh human rights
against security, Ignatieff pointed to the targeting of immigrants
after 9/11.

"In a situation of radical uncertainty, when you can't evaluate
how bad the situation might be, it is legitimate as an emergency
measure to pull in a lot of people," he said. "The mistake was
that after that, we denied a large category of people due process."

He said pre-emptive military action in Iraq was another tough
choice, arguing that the war was the only way Iraq would ever
"have any chance of a democratic regime" after the very real
horrors of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Other speakers during the conference explored the impact of
September 11 and the U.S. response.

Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute, speaks at the conference
on Human Rights.
Photo by Peter Morenus

Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute, said
the willingness of the United States to use force to impose
democracy and human rights has aroused great antagonism in the
Middle East and other parts of the world.

It has also damaged the human rights cause, he said.

"What has happened since September 11, 2001 is that the image of
the U.S. worldwide is now the image of a human rights violator
rather than the image of a respecter of human rights," he said.
"Everywhere in the world, people know about Guantanamo, and
it has become a symbol of American policy.

"Increasingly, the administration has relied on the argument
that it went into Iraq to promote human rights - that is, to
remove a tyrant who oppressed his people," Neier said.

But the U.S. is seen as hypocritical in its advocacy of human
rights, he said, because of the way those who were suspected
of terrorism were treated at Guantanamo and the way the war
with Iraq has been conducted. That gives the human rights cause
a bad name, he added.

"The very terms 'democracy' and 'human rights' seem to be associated
in many parts of the world with American willingness to impose
its will by its superior force and to act in a way which seems
to disregard all international conventions in the process,"
Neier said.

Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU), said the Patriot Act and other laws passed after
September 11, 2001 undermine civil liberties and are ineffective
in boosting national security.

Strossen said that the first post-September 11 ACLU report captured
the unfolding situation. "It was called 'Insatiable Appetite:
The Government's Demand for New and Unnecessary Powers After
September 11,'" she said.

Section 505 of the Patriot Act, for example, dramatically expands
the government's power to require various record holders, including
banks, libraries, and Internet service providers, to turn over
confidential information without having to go before a court,
by alleging that the information is sought in connection with
an anti-terrorism or counter-intelligence investigation. "The
record holder must turn over the information and must not tell
us that it has done so," she said.

Strossen was critical of Congress for passing the Patriot Act.
She said most members have admitted that they didn't read the
Act.

She also chided Attorney General John Ashcroft for insinuating
that civil libertarian critics of the Act were unpatriotic or
even traitors.

And she discussed a lawsuit the ACLU has brought to challenge
what she termed the government's unjustified overreaching since
September 11.

Despite the challenges, Strossen said, there is cause for optimism,
as most of the administration's subsequent efforts to expand
the Patriot Act have been effectively resisted in Congress,
with resistance on both sides of the aisle and in both houses.

Mary Robinson, left, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
speaks at the conference. At right is Richard Wilson, the director of the Human Rights
Institute.
Photo by Peter Morenus

Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights, challenged the notion that a "war on terror" is
the antidote to insecurity.

"The terrible attacks of 9/11 fell in my view within the definition
... of crimes against humanity, which would have been a more
effective rubric under which to organize and sustain an effective
response," Robinson said. "The language of being at war with
terrorism has had direct and nefarious implications. . Order
and security have become priorities that trump all other concerns.

"To combat terrorism," she said, "it is necessary to probe
more deeply and tackle the root causes of humiliation, anger,
and frustration which can be manipulated to draw recruits for
terrorist action."

Robinson said many people in the world are "preoccupied with
different experiences of insecurity - the atrocities in Darfur,
Sudan; the misery of the millions living with, and orphaned
by, HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and elsewhere;
the long hardship suffered by indigenous peoples in the Americas;
the humiliating poverty in slums and rural areas in the developing
world. They all tell us a deplorable truth: that governments
in different regions of the world are failing to
provide even the rudiments of human security."

A new approach is needed, she said, "which begins with a broader
understanding of what defines human and global security. We
must craft a policy that manages and balances our increasing
interdependence with our increased vulnerability."